Pat Buchanan makes a lot of sense, and on many points I am in agreement with him. But on one point I disagree with him profoundly. Christianity is not the sole property of white people of European descent; the Kingdom of God is open to people of all nations. Like Buchanan, I am concerned that …
Category: Politics
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/03/22/suicide-of-a-superpower-will-america-survive-to-2025/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/06/18/the-march-of-folly-by-barbara-tuchman/
Nov 03 2011
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino
I cannot praise this book too highly. I have read other books on modern Iran, but this book gives a much more detailed, complex, and fascinating look at what life in Iran is actually like. The author paints a picture of a vibrant and spirited people struggling desperately against a hated theocracy, and a theocracy …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/11/03/persian-mirrors-the-elusive-face-of-iran-by-elaine-sciolino/
Jun 07 2011
Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough
Review in brief: Encounters between Russia and the peoples of the Northern Caucasus have not been happy ones, and have generally ended badly for the smaller nations involved. From the Nogai driven into the Black Sea in the 1700s to the Circassians mostly slaughtered or removed to the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s to the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/06/07/let-our-fame-be-great-by-oliver-bullough/
May 05 2011
Premature Evaluation: Yalta by S.M. Plokhy
Did FDR give away too much at Yalta? Was Churchill sketching out percentages of influence in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with Stalin? How far did Stalin’s plans for annexations run? And was the Cold War inevitable? In Yalta: The Price of Peace, S.M. Plokhy goes to the literature and the archives with these questions, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2011/05/05/premature-evaluation-yalta-by-s-m-plokhy/
Oct 12 2010
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
There has been a movement in recent times among historians and political scientists to rehabilitate Machiavelli’s reputation. After reading this book, I cannot agree with these scholars. Machiavelli’s recipe for statesmanship is inhuman and diabolical. He clearly sees power as an end in itself and not as something to be used to serve the public …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2010/10/12/the-prince/
Oct 27 2009
Rory the Tory?
File under “Who knew?” The Guardian reports that Rory Stewart has been selected as a candidate for the UK’s parliament from a safe (10,000 majority) Conservative seat. In one of those moves that makes me think that parliamentary systems are odd sometimes, one of his first actions will be to move so that he actually …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/27/rory-the-tory/
Sep 12 2009
Femininity by Susan Brownmiller
Like most works of feminist literature–and I have read quite a few–I can find little to argue with in this book. Brownmiller’s arguments make sense to me…but that is because I am a man, and as a man I can readily agree that functionality is superior to ornamentality, that reason is superior to emotion, that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/09/12/femininity-by-susan-brownmiller/
Jul 08 2009
Gold and Iron, by Fritz Stern
“This is a book about Germans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused on Bismarck and Bleichröder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker, collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of a Germany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism and an earlier world with its ancient …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/07/08/gold-and-iron-by-fritz-stern/
Dec 15 2008
Premature Evaluation: Sundown Towns
An important story, very badly told. Before and, more crucially, immediately after the American Civil War, African-Americans were widely dispersed throughout the country. By the 1940s, however, blacks living outside the South were concentrated in particular areas of the largest cities. In Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism James Loewen asks how that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/12/15/premature-evaluation-sundown-towns/
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